Throughout the Elizabethan and Stuart periods Britons had extensive interaction with Turks and Moors. It is significant that such interaction took place at all, since neither of the two peoples were permanent residents of England, nor were they subjects of the Crown. The Muslims were totally outside the parameter of English authority because they belonged, and were seen to belong, to an empire of military might and commercial potential. They were not homeless refugees from the continent who, like the Jews, sought new domiciles and work opportunities in England, nor were they defeated and dispersed people like the American Indians. The Muslims had a clear geographical locus and did not as readily seek to emigrate to England as other peoples: while large numbers of Dutch and other Protestant immigrants settled in London in the second half of the sixteenth century, along with a small number of Portuguese and Spanish Marranos, only a few Muslim converts to Anglican Christianity (along with possibly some artisans) were known to have settled in the city. The Muslims had a distinct political, geographical, and religious identity that both protected and separated them from the Christian Other.
Despite this strong sense of separation between Christians and Muslims, Queen Elizabeth became the first English monarch to cooperate openly with the Muslims, and to allow her subjects to trade and interact with them without being liable to prosecution for dealing with “infidels.”1 Eager to find new markets for her merchants and secure military support against Spain throughout the 1580s and 1590s, the queen offered the Turkish and the Moroccan rulers mutually beneficial and practical agreements. In her correspondence with Sultan Murad (reg. 1574–1595), both agreed to admit English and Turkish traders into each others’ kingdoms: the sultan assured her in a letter of 1579 that the English “may lawfully come to our imperiall Dominions, and freely returne home.”2 In turn, Elizabeth assured him: “we will graunt as equall and as free a libertie to the subjects of your highnesse with us for the use of traffique, when they wil, and as often as they wil, to come, and go and from us and our kingdomes.”3 England was now open to “Turks.” So extensive was the commercial and diplomatic coordination between the queen and the sultan that Europeans suspected her of planning to offer him “safe port in England, by means of which to set his foot also into the Western Empire.”4 In 1590 King James VI of Scotland was “perswaided that no Christian Prince [except Queen Elizabeth] ever had in the Turk suche great estimation”; and by the end of the century, the Pope viewed Elizabeth as “a confederate with the Turk.”5
In order to maintain her amicable relations with both the Turks and the Moors, the queen made sure that English sea captains released Muslim slaves from captured Spanish galleys. After the English fleet attacked Cadiz in 1596, thirty-eight “poore wretched Turks” who had been “gally-slaves” swam over to the English side. It pleased the fleet commanders, as it was reported in Hakluyt, “to apparel them, and to furnish them with money, and all other necessaries, and to bestow on them a barke, and a Pilot, to see them freely and safely conveied into Barbary.”6 Like England, France too released Muslim slaves.7 While some freed slaves returned to their countries, others sought help. In 1591, one “Hamet, a distressed Turk” petitioned Queen Elizabeth to permit him to fight with her forces against the Spaniards.8 How Hamed came upon this proposal is unclear, but it would not have been unprecedented in England for an alien to assist in military action.9 From 1575 to 1588, immigrants were repeatedly made to join in national defense, and in 1596, it was reported by the Fugger spy that the English fleet that attacked Cadiz had been accompanied by “five galleys from Barbary” and that the English took with them to Barbary some of the ships they captured there.10 Evidently the military cooperation between Britons and Moors covered both land and sea operations and was based on what seemed to be (although it was never formalized) a strategic alliance between London and Marrakesh.
Other “Turks” chose to remain in England by converting to Anglicanism—as “Chinano a Turke” did in 1586 and “John Baptista, of Tripoli” in 1605—a man who was later described by Robert Burton as “a Mauritanian priest.”11 Such a choice, however, was made only by a handful of Muslims since Queen Elizabeth was always eager to return Muslim captives in order to maintain her friendship with both the Ottoman Sultan and the Moroccan ruler. What may be truly indicative of the deep rapprochement between England and Morocco is the possibility that money collected at the Spital sermons in London, which were intended for ransoming Britons from “the Turkes or other hethens,” may have been used to repatriate Moors who had been enslaved by Spaniards and released in England. Such Christian charity to the “infidels” is striking and shows how much the queen valued cooperation with Morocco: one of her last letters to Mulay Ahmad in Morocco (March 1603) concerned her freeing of “Moros y a Turcos” who had sought refuge in England.12
There is no information about how refugee Muslims lived or about how they supported and conducted themselves among the English, who were accustomed to images of the bloody and cruel “Mahometan” on the stage. Still, Muslims continually appear in English documents, either as having been freed by British sailors or having come to England on trading missions. Unfortunately, and because of the brevity of allusions to them, it is not always possible to distinguish between the freed slave and the merchant. In December 1602, for instance, a man, wrote John Manningham in his Middle Temple diary, “attired in habit of a Turke desyrous to see hir Majestie, but as a straunger without hope of such grace, in regard of the retired manner of hir Lord, complained; answere made, howe gracious hir Majestie in admitting to presence, and howe able to discourse in anie language; which the Turke admired, and admitted, presents hir with a riche mantle, & c.”13
Who this Turk was is not clear, although the fact that he had wealth enough to offer a “mantle” to the queen and was multi-lingual suggests that he was a well-traveled merchant. In October 1617, “Turkish piratts,” as George Lord Carew reported to Sir Thomas Roe, approached the Scilly coast and met with some fishermen “loaden with fishe, of whom they bought commodities, payinge for them more then the wares was worthe.” As a result, Carew was suspicious that these Turks were not really traders but actually pirates who were trying to “discover and view the coaste.”14 In October 1622, two “Turkes” were given passes by the Privy Council to “returne into their countrie” and in April of the following year, a pass for “ten Turkes to returne into their country” was given.15 In March 1631, a pass was issued for “Barke Baha, a Marchant of Santa Crux in Barbary, to retourne thither with his wife and twoe maide servants.”16 In 1654, there was an “Albion Blackamore lately come to Town that is . . . well skill’d in Dancing on the Ropes.”17 This “Blackamore,” who might well have been a freed Muslim slave, became quite popular: in September 1657, John Evelyn went to London where he saw “a famous Rope-daunser call’d the Turk.”18
In the mid-1650s, a Turk by the name of Rigep Dandulo visited England and was entertained by the son of “the Lady Lawrence of Chelsey.” As he walked around in “Turkish Habit” he became the center of the community’s interest and was later, under the supervision of a number of leading Anglican clerics, converted to Christianity and settled in England.19 In February 1657, the Levant Company interceded with Oliver Cromwell on behalf of “two Turks, Halil and Hamett,” probably merchant delegates who sought “passage hence to their own country.”20 Two weeks after Cromwell’s death, on 16 September 1658, “The humble Petition of Mahamet: Mustaoth: Hamat and Abdulah: all of them Turke native borne” was presented to Richard Cromwell: “That they were taken prisonners by the Spanyard and there hath byne detayned slaues for the figure of 22 yeares And it happened that hauing tyme made their escape and gayned into ffrance And by license were granted liberty for to come into this Nation of Englaind for their conduct and passing home into their owne country by some of yor highnes shipping.”21 That same month another petition was presented to Cromwell on behalf of “Abducadir, Achmet Sillau, and Hamet, of Sally.”22 A decade later, in January 1669, a pass was given for “–– Hemmet, –– Abdra, and –– Hammond, Moors, natives of Barbary, to go into their own country.”23 From Elizabeth to Richard Cromwell and then Charles II, and whenever there was war with Spain or France, England served as a corridor between the Catholic continent and the territory of Islam.
This English accommodation of Muslims was invariably conducted with an eye to trade. As England expanded its commercial activity into the Muslim dominions, it not only helped prisoners of war but also welcomed Muslim seamen into its coastal towns. Treaties signed between Charles I and the Commonwealth administration on the one hand and the North African regencies on the other widened commercial links and, as with the Elizabethan treaties, allowed Turkish and Moorish seamen to use English and Welsh harbors. In October 1628, King Charles received Mohammed Calvecho and Ibrahim Mocadem who were sent as commissioners from the port of Salee in Morocco. Calvecho had arrived in England in June but waited until his companion arrived in October before they presented their letters to the king. The purpose of the visit was both military and commercial: the ambassadors sought arms from England in return for trading concessions to the Barbary Company and assistance in England’s Mediterranean confrontation with France and Spain.24 The visit was successful since a few years later, the Privy Council ordered the “Barbary merchants to trade only to the ports in Barbary named in the articles offered to the King of Morocco.”25 By the same token, “Turkish” seamen used English harbors. Between November 1631 and February 1632 a treaty was signed between Mulay al-Walid and Charles I in which “Moores” were to buy and sell goods in England.26 In September 1637, another treaty was signed between Mulay Mohammad Esheikh and King Charles in which the subjects of the Moroccan king were allowed to “exercise theire religion . . . in the Kingdome of the King of great Britaine.”27 Less than twenty years later, in October 1655, Muslim seamen docked in “Falmouth for provisions” much to the anxiety of the Dutch and the “Zealenders,” who feared that if the Turks continued to find welcome in England they would “destroy” their (Dutch) trade.28 Three years later a treaty was signed with the bey of Tunis that allowed ships from both England and Tunis to use each others’ harbors “for washing, cleaning, and repairing . . . and to buy and ship off any sort of victuals, alive or dead, or any other necessaries.”29
England also supported Muslim merchants with stipends and co-opted men of leverage so they could influence the decision making process in favor of British interests. As early as 1584, William Harborne told John Tipton, who had been appointed consul in the regencies, to contact “our Chaus Mahomet, with whom in all things you are to conferre of matters expedient, for the honor of her majesties country, & the commoditie, and libertie of poore captives.”30 Such employment of Muslim middlemen continued throughout the next century. In January 1697, passes were issued for “Cawra Mustapha, a native of Tunis in Barbary, to go to Turkey or Barbary.” Further, “an allowance for his subsistence” was earmarked “as a matter which will be of great benefit to his Majesty’s subjects living under that government.”31 In March, passes for “Mustapha and Mahomet, Algerians” were given; in April, a passage “for five poor Algerine seamen” was given because such cooperation would “be acceptable to the government of Algiers, and consequently of great use to his Majesty’s subjects there.”32 By the beginning of the modern period England was offering financial assistance and bribes to effect the economic and commercial penetration of North Africa and the Levant.
Simultaneous, however, with this commercial and political convivencia was an ongoing piracy committed both by Britons and Muslims against each other. Not unlike the Christian-Muslim frontiers in Andalusia in the fifteenth century or in Central Europe in the sixteenth century, amicability and battle went hand in hand with trading and raiding. And it was during Muslim privateering raids or commercial exchanges that numerous “Turkes and Moores” were captured either on the high seas or near the British coast and brought to stand trial as pirates.
Thus the second category in which Muslims were encountered in England was as prisoners. Particularly after the unsuccessful English attack on Algiers in 1621 and the retaliation of the Barbary Corsairs against English traders and pirates, thousands of Britons were captured and hauled to the slave markets of North Africa. Similarly, Muslims were captured and either put to death or hauled into the jails of England. In 1620 it was reported that English ships had captured a “Turkish pirate ship” after which all 200 Turks on board were executed; in 1622 five “Turks” from Algiers who had been captured in a sea battle with the English ship “Exchange” were brought to Plymouth jail; soon after, nine more Turks were brought to Exeter “either to be arraigned according to the punishment of delinquents in that kind, or disposed of as the King and Council shall think meet.”33 Meanwhile, a number of Turks had been captured and kept prisoners in Cadiz in order to exchange them with English captives in Tetuan.34 Three years later, in February 1625, Sir John Eliot, vice admiral of Devon, wrote from Exeter to the lord admiral, the duke of Buckingham, about bringing the Turks who had been captured in England to trial. By then their number had swelled to twenty-three “Turkes & Renegadoes” along with an Englishman and a Dutchman.35 He reported that some of these men had been captured near Plymouth while others had been in jail for seven or eight years. Twenty men were sentenced to death and five were reprieved, including a “boy, young, and not capable of the knowledge or reason of doing good or ill.” Importantly, Eliot attached the names of these captives, thereby revealing their geographical origins. There were some from Istanbul: “Abraham de Constantinople,” and “Mahomet de Constantinople.” Others were from Algiers: “Shaban de Arguir” and “Morat de Arguir.” The rest came from around the Mediterranean. In this respect they were truly “Turks and Moors” in the precise sense of those terms. Noticeable among the names are those of “Andrew Jaquis als Mahomet” and “Vincent Hammett”; the combination of Christian and Muslim names indicates that these men were “renegadoes,” since Christian converts to Islam always adopted a Muslim name.
By April 1625, it was reported to the Privy Council that there were “3 or 4 Turkes or Moores” in Exeter; thirty in Plymouth, three or four in Bristol and ten in “Baronet Seymor.”36 Apparently, these were not all pirates since the officials in those sea towns did not seem to know what to do with them. Similar confusion appeared in a letter of June 1626 by Francis Bassett, sheriff and vice admiral of Cornwall. Bassett, a man more interested in hawking and cockfighting than in Turks, was eager to rid himself of the prisoners he had in custody and bluntly inquired “How to dispose of these Turkes I haue, I am in a maze.”37 The reason for his confusion was that he was hearing different views. His correspondent Sir Francis Godolphin consulted with the commissioners of the Navy and others who urged him “that by noe meanes,” should he “not [sic] put them to death.” But others expressed different views. Bassett noted that the prisoners, who were forty in number, were in danger because of their “dyett” and some were so old that they were no longer employable. His chief anxiety, however, was that they might “doe mischeffe, & escape.” They had asked to be sent to London, but if he sent them into the country they would, he suspected, “lye so neere the sae, as it may be easie for them to steale a Boate, or take a Barque . . . and so escape.” Evidently, like other destitute prisoners in England and the rest of the British Isles, the Muslims were being forgotten in jail. They were in ill health as a result of eating foods—what little they would get—that were very different from what they were used to. But most importantly, they were totally ostracized by the populace; as Bassett noted, he could not find any “man so madd as to meddle with them.”
One man, however, who had thought of meddling with Muslim captives was Sir Thomas Roe, the English ambassador in Istanbul, who spent much of his time in the Ottoman capital trying to secure the safety of English traders and seamen and their liberation once they were captured by the corsairs. On 1 February 1625, he wrote to King James requesting that he authorize a trade-off between the English captives in Algiers and the Turkish captives in Ireland. “God,” he wrote, “hath prouided, by sending more [Turks] into Ireland, the liberty of whom will release those fewe [Britons] yet kept as hostage.”38 A few months later he reported to the Privy Council that over four hundred English captives had been released, but that the rest of the Britons were still in Algiers awaiting the exchange. Roe urged the Council “to giue like liberty to those Moores lately taken on the coast of Ireland and Plimmouth; who will fully, and with ouerplus, counteruayle and fullfill the couenant made on behalfe of the English; and being returned together with Jafer aga, wilbe a great and efficacious meanes, to strengthen and confirme this beginning.”39
The king did not comply with Roe’s request—actually he appeared to Roe not to be honoring the English part of the agreement with the Algerians that had been reached earlier that year. In June 1626, Bassett wrote to his friend Edward Nicholas complaining about the “dyvers Turkes which were brought in within my viceadmyraltie” and added that their number had increased since the English sailors on a Cornwall ship that had been captured by the Turks later overpowered their captors and brought more Turks as prisoners.40 Because they had not been brought to trial as Bassett had hoped, the Muslim captives became so desperate that in July of that year they petitioned the Privy Council for assistance: “The humble petition of Jeffera Reys Captayne Joffer Ballu Basha and 36 more Turkes and Moores in a shippe of Argeir mored at Plymouth.”41 In their petition there is some information about their background and condition. They reported that having been “distressed at Sea” and “presuming uppon the late league made by his Ma:ties Ambassador” with Algiers, they “put into” his Majesty’s “port of Plymouth.” Evidently whenever commercial treaties were signed between England and a North African regency, Muslim sailors assumed that it was safe for them to use British port facilities in the same way that Britons were using their own harbors.
Unfortunately, such assumptions were not always shared by the English, who were not unwilling to exploit men in such desperate conditions. For, continued the petitioners, soon after they had docked, they were captured and treated as pirates of “Salley” although they had not intended “to revenge [harm] any English.” Their advocate, who prepared the petition for them, reminded the addressees that by virtue of England’s league with Algiers, the prisoners ought to be released and returned to their homes. After examining the petition the Privy Council concurred: in order “to maintayne with those of Argier and Tunnis” the “league and good corespondencie which his Mejesty desires,” the Council ordered that “all the said Turkes and Mores should be at libertie to returne back for that countrie, and putt aboard theire owne shippe, and to have restored unto them all such monyes, armes, munition, provisions and furniture whatsoever belonging to them or theyre shippe as were seazed.” It was also decided that all expenses incurred in preparing the ship would be met by the “Turkey Companie,” which was urged to speed up their departure so that “the Board be noe further troubled therewithall.”42
The number of Muslim captives in England grew that year: in June of 1626, forty-one “Turks” were captured at sea and brought to St. Ives in Cornwall.43 Meanwhile, the ruler of Algiers, who was angry at Charles for breaking their agreement to exchange captives, dispatched his ambassador with over one hundred freed English captives to press the case of the Muslim captives in England. But the ambassador was unsuccessful in his mission and, after spending nine months, returned to his country in a rage. Apprehensive of what might ensue, the duke of Buckingham urged that the king send a letter and a “present of a ring from his Royal hand” to Algiers.44 Nothing, however, was done to placate the Algerians. As a result, their attacks on English ships escalated thereafter. In September 1630, the Moroccan ruler, Sidi Ali bin Mohammad, sent a letter to King Charles in which he demanded that the king release all Muslim captives and send them back to the lands of Islam (“libilad al-Islam”) regardless of whether or not they were Sidi’s subjects. After doing so, Charles could be assured that no captive from the “English tribes” (“qaba’il al-Ingleez”) would remain in North Africa.45 With regard to the Muslim ruler, the English king and his piratical subjects were behaving in a manner comparable to the marauding desert tribes!
The question of what to do with prisoners was problematic to prison wardens, especially when the prisoners were old and incapable of work. There is no evidence that Muslims were sold and bought as slaves in Elizabethan or early Stuart England. But later in the century, as Muslim power declined, references begin to appear to Moorish and Muslim slaves owned by Britons.46 A certain Hamet Tanjawi, for instance, was captured and enslaved during the Restoration period; he became a servant of the duke of York, from whom he learned a wide variety of naval lore, and later escaped back to Tangier where he put his English warfare training into Muslim use as he led the attack on the English fort in Tangier in 1676. 47 In his account of captivity in Morocco in the 1680s, Thomas Phelps recalled meeting with an “antient Moor, who formerly had been a slave in England and spoke good English, and who was set at liberty by our late Gracious King Charles the 2d.”48 Another captive/slave was the corsair Abdallah bin Aisha, who spent three years in England and was released by King Charles without ransom upon the intercession of James II.49
While these are the only allusions to North African Muslim slaves in England, there are numerous indications that Britons hauled Muslim captives to the Barbary Coast and exchanged them for English captives.50 In 1635 Robert Blake was authorized to take forty-five Moors to Barbary to exchange them for English captives.51 But he immediately ran into difficulty. There were more English than Moorish captives. So when two poor women pleaded in October 1636 with the Lords of the Privy Council to have their husbands exchanged with the Muslim captives, they were told that the captives had already been exchanged with English captives in Salee—probably men with royal or merchant connections. “Except there be some of the prisoners remaining in co. Dorset, he [Jerome, earl of Portland] knows not how these women should be relieved.”52
While imprisoned Muslims sometimes petitioned for their freedom, at other times it was Britons who petitioned the Privy Council on their behalf. In September 1626, Charles Barrett complained from Cornwall that he and other inhabitants were being burdened by expenses incurred in “retaining and relieveing manie Turkes brought as prisoners into this kingdome.”53 Just as Francis Bassett had been anxious earlier about the possibility of the Turks’ escape, Barrett too was concerned about their intelligence-gathering ability. That is why, he explained to the Council, the prisoners were kept in “inlande townes remote from the sea to prevent their view and survey of the portes, harbors and other landing places.” Barrett feared that after returning to their countries, the prisoners would provide information about the English coastline—information that could prove disastrous in the hands of pirates and privateers. So extreme was the anxiety Barrett generated in the Privy Council that he was told to get rid of the prisoners as quickly as possible by exchanging them with English prisoners in Barbary.
A crisis seemed to have developed over these prisoners, for the keeper of the prison in Lanceston, Cornwall, refused to hand over the prisoners in his custody until the expenses he had incurred had been met. A warrant was therefore sent to him on 12 December from the Privy Council ordering him to deliver to Barrett all the prisoners who had been apprehended before 29 September, and to deliver to John Harrison, the king’s agent in Barbary, all prisoners apprehended after that date—evidence that the number of Muslim captives in England was growing.54 Harrison had been given a commission by the king to exchange English captives in Morocco with Muslim captives in England. The king had declared: “And wee doe hereby give and graunt unto the saide John Harrison full power and authoritye to transport and carry with him into the parts of Barbary such and so many Moores as are at this tyme prisoners in this our realme of England, and them there to deliver in exchaunge for the redemption of such of our owne subjects beinge prisoners in any of the places aforesaide.”55 Unfortunately, however, as Harrison reported to Secretary Coke, his ship that “was to have transported Moorish prisoners to Barbary had sprung a leak.” He suspected that there was a “design” by Barrett to transport the captives on a ship in Dartmouth to Leghorn and sell them there “for slaves” rather than exchange them with the British captives in Salee and Algiers.56 But no such design was carried out since, soon after, it was reported that numerous Turks and Moors were “wandering and begging about the City of London.”57
Indeed, in February 1627, the Council learned that ten or more of the prisoners whom Barrett was supposed to use for redeeming British prisoners had escaped “out of the Westerne parts and doe hearber themselves in the cittie of London.”58 A request was made to the officers of the Lord Mayor of the city of London to search for the Muslims and upon their capture to return them to Barrett. Another report in that same year mentioned forty “Turkes leaving” in England, some of whom (probably those who had been released by Harrison) were employed in the following manner: three as tailors, two as shoemakers, two as menders, two as button makers, and one as solicitor.59 That Muslims were living and working in London raises the fascinating possibility of a community infrastructure. Was there a prayerhouse or mosque where they assembled? Were they able to sustain their daily prayer ritual, their Friday gathering, and their avoidance of pork and wine (or for the English, ale)? Also intriguing is the reference to a “solicitor” (and, significantly, not a barrister). Was he simply a provider of social advice or had he learned a smattering of English law? Unfortunately, there is no further information about this group of London Muslims, although it is quite possible that the community was still in the city in the early 1640s, when an anonymous writer referred to a sect of “Mahometans . . . here in London.”60 If these or other Muslims had actually settled in London, they would correspond to the artisans, skilled workers, small merchants, and other European immigrants who had settled in England during this period, and who did so for purposes of commercial gain.61 Many single men crossed from the continent to England for work; Muslims would not have been unlike them. Just as there were English workers among the Muslims, so were there Muslim workers among the English.
In September 1636, two Moors were captured—one “Mahammet aged twentie seven or thereabout” and “Hammet aged fortie foure yeares or there-about”—from Salee. They had been sailing with “foure Moores, eighteen [sailors] of Sallie, five Renegadoes Dutch one English their Pilott.”62 When their ship reached the English coast the renegades turned against the Moors after being called “to stand upp for their liues & liberties” whereupon “they drove the Moores into the hold, hoisted saile, and brought their Barque into the first [English] port.”63 Writing to the Lords of the Admiralty, the earl of Portland included “coppies of the examinations of two of the moores.”64 Mohammad seemed to have done more talking than Hamed, for he informed Portland that he had been in “about twentie seven” voyages “on the coast of Spaine, save one the last yeare on the coast of ffrance, there they tooke thirtie ffrench & ten packs of cloth.” Earlier both men confessed that their ship had been “set out by merchants of Sallee for the taking of Chrystians” and that the “Turk & Renegadoes” wanted to do “them service against the Spaniards.” But then they arrived near the coast of England where they “mett two fishermen whome they would not have pursued being too neare Land, but the Captain commanding & guiding the helme” made them capture one, after which the English renegade pilot and the captured English made “themselves [masters] of the Turks . . . and brought them in.”65
Portland assured his addressees that “if they [Moors] shall confesse as much att tryall as they haue,” there would be no need for “other euidence against them.” Once the Moors admitted to their piracy, Portland hoped for speedy action against them because “they lye heere att a great charge.” In that same period, six “Moors or Turks of Sallee” were “distressed” and forced to land on English soil; their ship, as Lord Portsmouth reported, was brought into Hurst Castle.66 Like earlier seamen they believed that the commercial and military treaties that had been negotiated between the king of Morocco and Charles I allowed them to use English ports for victualing and safety. Much to their horror they found themselves imprisoned and arraigned at Winchester, along with other coreligionists who had been captured on the Isle of Wight. Confused about how to proceed further, Lord Portland wrote to Thomas Wyan asking him to help in the “Tryall of certaine Mores or Turkes” that was set to take place at Winchester. The prisoners had to wait for over a year before being brought to trial, and in October 1637, Sir James Bagg wrote to the Lords of the Admiralty about it. He confirmed that the six “Moores or Turkes of Sallye” had been “inforced to land out of their boate” but the “evidence against them of taking a small boate in Tourbay” led to their conviction as pirates. Bagg added their names: “Ama Dela, Abdala, Hammett, Hammett, Muhammett & Rubely.”67
Muslim seamen were continually taken prisoners, sometimes rightly as pirates and sometimes wrongly as merchant seamen who were accused of piracy, so they could be sold as slaves or exchanged with British captives in North Africa. Sometimes Muslims were brought in groups; at other times they were alone, as was the case with the “More” whom Robert Swyer kidnapped from Tetuan in Morocco in 1627. 68 In 1637 two Moorish boys were captured and brought to England for the purpose of converting them to Christianity.69 That same year, Captain William Rainsborough told the vice admiral to allow the Algerian “Alcado” to check for Moors among the renegade prisoners on his ship.70 More than thirty years later, in March 1669, it was reported that the English ship Morning Star had had on it “a Moorish boy” who was subsequently rescued by an Algiers man of war.71 In 1670 a ship with ten Turks and two renegades was “driven on shoar near the Port of Trally in Ireland,” after which the Muslims were captured and made prisoners.72
The third and final category of Muslims who came to England was that of ambassadors. Official Muslim delegations began to arrive in England as early as the second half of the sixteenth century. Such visits introduced the London community to the Muslims in a manner different from that of the previously discussed groups. As refugees and prisoners who were ostracized in jail or wandered the London streets, Muslims were unable to project their culture or religion. Ambassadors, however, arrived in pomp and enjoyed the protection of the monarch, and therefore could and did practice their religious observances openly, abide by their dietary rules, and appear in their national dress with its conspicuous turban. Such visitors provided the populace with the only real portrait of how Muslims—wealthy Muslims, that is—lived, worshipped, and conducted themselves. Although they numbered far fewer than refugees and prisoners, it was this elite group that provided Londoners with their most authentic image of Muslims.
The first Muslims to arrive in London as representatives of their monarchs were “two Moores, being noble men, whereof one was of the Kings blood,” who were brought by Thomas Wyndham in 1551. 73 In September 1579, a Turkish envoy arrived with a letter to Queen Elizabeth in which the sultan offered “unristricted commerce in his country to Englishmen.”74 This envoy is important because he probably was the first Turkish official to visit Elizabethan England—and to bring with him the first communication from Sultan Murad III to the queen.75 In 1580 the sultan sent a merchant/envoy by the name of Ahmed to make some purchases in England.76 Three years later the first Turkish ambassador arrived, bringing presents that represented the wealth and exoticism of the Levant: lions, Turkish scimitars, horses, and unicorn horns.77 In January 1589 an ambassador from Morocco, Ahmed Belkassem, visited England with the English agent Henry Roberts, and was received by over forty members of the Barbary Company, “well mounted all on horsebacke,” and escorted into the city of London by torchlight.78 In 1595 another ambassador, al-Caid Ahmed ben Adel visited England, accompanied by two other caids and a retinue “of twentye five or thirtye persones.” That the visitors were caids is significant: the caids were the leaders of the corsairs who attacked European shipping vessels in the Mediterranean and Atlantic. Was England entering into secret negotiations with the Barbary Corsairs—to the extent of welcoming them openly in the metropolis? According to the Fugger informant, who disliked the English for their piracy and pillaging, the answer was affirmative.79
Not much information has survived about those visits of the ambassadors and caids, unlike the visit in 1600 of the Moroccan ambassador, “Hamet Xarife,” as he was known in England, or ‘Abd al-Wahid bin Mas‘ood bin Mohammad ‘Annouri, as Mulay Ahmed listed his full name in the letter to Elizabeth on 15 June 1600. This ambassador arrived with two merchants, “Arealhadgel Messy, and Alhadge Hamet Mimon,” along with thirteen others–all told, sixteen Muslims.80 They arrived in August “strangely attired and behauiored” and stayed for six months, lodging in the house of the alderman in the Royal Exchange.81 During their visit the problem of their “dyet” arose; as Muslims they could only eat halal meat, and therefore they slaughtered their meats at home in accordance with Islamic law: “They kild all their owne meate within their house, as sheepe, lambes, poultrie and such like, and they turne their faces eastwrad when they kill any thing,” noted one observer.82 Another problem may have arisen when one of the retinue died; where, as a non-Christian, could he be buried? Meanwhile, they traveled around the city, observing much of English social and commercial custom, attending royal celebrations, and looking at and being looked at by Londoners. They were so ubiquitous that Londoners considered them “rather espials then honorable ambassadors.”83 These swarthy men with their strange clothes and habits alienated the Elizabethan community, especially since it was reported that they refused to offer any alms to the local poor and “used all subtiltie and diligence to know the prises, wayghts, measures, and all kindes of differences of such commodities, as eyther their country sent hither, or England transported thither.”84 That is why, when they were making preparations to leave England, John Chamberlain noted that neither “the marchants nor marriners will . . . carrie them into Turkie, because they thincke yt a matter odious and scandalous to the world to be too frendly or familiar with infidells.”85 Indeed, judging by the surviving portrait of the ambassador, with his stern face and fierce look, the English painter, like the populace, may have found the Moors not just alienating but intimidating too.
Elizabeth was the only monarch to entertain so many Muslim ambassadors. She was so fascinated by things Islamic that she requested from her ambassador in Istanbul some Turkish clothes; like her father, she wanted to dress in the oriental fashion.86 Elizabeth’s successor, James I, received a certain Mustapha in 1607 who, unlike earlier visitors, was willing to “dispense with some of his Turkish fashions, and to accustome himselfe to ours.”87 Still, he paraded in “many changes of garments very rich, and several turbants” and remained in England for a few months.88 In 1611, “Two Chiaus or Messengers from ye Turke” came to London,89 and on 3 November 1618, another “Chiaus” had his audience with the king at the Banqueting House which, as Master of Ceremonies John Finet noted, “was purposely hung for him with rich hangings.” In an unprecedented gesture in England, the king touched one of the chiaus’s retinue, “said to be his Son, for cure of the Kings Evill, useing at it the accustomed Ceremony of Signing the place infected with the crosse, but no prayers before or after.” Such an episode is noteworthy for its openness to religious interaction: although the chiaus would not allow the recitation of a Christian prayer over his son, he accepted the signing of the cross.90 Either the chiaus believed in Christian medicine or his son was so sick that he was willing to try any cure—even if that involved what to a Muslim is the highly objectionable sign of the cross. That James, a monarch who was notoriously hostile to Islam, was willing to apply his royal miracle on a Muslim may have stemmed from his desire to demonstrate not only Christianity’s superior medicine to the Muslims, but the international efficacy of his royal touch to his subjects.
Soon after his accession to the throne Charles I received, in April of 1625, an Algerian “chiaous” who brought with him to England a present of Barbary horses, tigers, and lions, and who remained in England for nine months—without, however, making much of an impression on the king, who did not give him the customary present before he departed.91 When the plague broke out in London a house in Deptford was requested by the London agent in Algiers, Mr. Leat, for the ambassador. But the request was denied and the house was given to one “Mr. Bell [who was] more worthy to be respected and accommodated, being a committeeman, than a stranger, especially he being a Turk.”92 At a time when there were thousands of English and Scottish captives in North Africa, it would have been unlikely for London merchants to assist the representative of the king who was enslaving their compatriots. In June 1627, two ambassadors from Salee arrived in London, Mohammad ben Sa’d and Ahmad ben Hussein, accompanied by Harrison, the English agent there, for Charles to negotiate with them over the possible use of Salee as a base of operations against Spain.93
Neither these ambassadors nor Calvecho and Mocadem left their mark on the popular or royal imagination. The Moroccan ambassador of 1637, however, did, and actually stunned London and its court. In October of that year, Alkaid Jaurar bin Abdella came to England on the first visit of a Muslim given detailed coverage in the London press. When the ambassador and his retinue landed at Tower Hill, Finet wrote, over a hundred aldermen and citizens of the city were there to welcome him, dressed in their “scarlet gowns” and “chaynes of gold,”94 in a spectacle that was “attended by Thousands, and ten Thousands of Spectators.”95 He was then “lighted with 5 or 600 torches to his lodging” in Wood Street near St. Lawrence Jewry—which meant that his procession passed through a good part of East London; later when he went to see the king in Whitehall he crossed the breadth of the metropolis, which was “throng’d and crowded by innumerable multitudes of people of all sorts.”96 Alkaid was seen by thousands of Londoners.
English society saw in this ambassador the full flourish of Islam.97 He went to his public audience with the king on horseback (and not in a coach), a servant preceding him with his “scymetar” and “Moors in their country habits on horseback” following. He brought with him a present of “four hawks,” which the king insisted on having presented to him soon after the ambassador arrived in London and before the official audience, lest they be mistreated by “unskilled keepers.” There were also “four horses, two of them with their rich saddles and furnitures on covered with cloths of damask, and other two with their cloaths only, each of them led by a black Moor.” When the ambassador came before the king and queen he spoke to them in “Arabick by the interpretation of his Associate”—very likely the first time Charles had ever heard Arabic spoken by a Muslim. Significantly, the ambassador, who was a Portuguese convert to Islam, knew various European languages, which he later used and for which he was admired; but he insisted on Arabic in that first meeting as evidence of political and cultural assertiveness. There was such commotion and “intruding presse” about his visit that soon after his arrival the London populace was able to read about the official welcome for the ambassador in a publication that included a picture of him. Appropriately for a man who had been liked, the frontispiece showed the turbaned face of a benign and sweet man. (He was, after all, a eunuch).98
One of the reasons this ambassador made such an unprecedented impact on the English was that he had brought with him from Morocco 366 British captives, 350 having been ransomed by the king himself, and 16 released free of charge by the Moroccan ruler as a sign of good will. No other ambassador had had such an advantage; the Moroccan ambassador in 1600 had brought with him nine Dutch captives, and the 1626 ambassador had brought one hundred Britons.99 Alkaid enjoyed the advantage of being at the head of a procession that not only paraded his wealth and authority, but also captives who were returning to their families and communities. As Finet reported, the sixteen captives walked behind him as he went to see the king, all having received new clothes at the ambassador’s own expense. This procession is particularly significant as it could be viewed not only as a welcome to him, but as a public celebration for the returning captives—a celebration that was very common on the Continent but unprecedented in England. In France, Italy, and Spain, such public celebrations were frequent and served as a means to fuel anti-Muslim sentiment as well as raise funds for redeeming captives, but there is no record of any similar celebration taking place in England before this.
While King Charles wanted to establish peace with Morocco and to reduce piracy, some of his subjects were unwilling to give up their attacks on Muslim shipping.100 Two years after the arrival of al-Jaurar another emissary was sent to coordinate a treaty with England: Mohammad ben Askar arrived in April 1639 to “demaund justice against” English pirates.101 Little seemed to have been accomplished by this emissary because his arrival coincided with the king’s departure for the north to wage war against the Scots. A year later, in September 1640, a chiaus along with “15 or 16 followers” visited London as a personal messenger from the Ottoman sultan. As in the case of the 1618 chiaus, when this messenger went to the Banqueting House for his audience with the king, the place was “purposely” decorated for him.102 Finet’s emphasis is important because it reveals a sense of rivalry with the Ottoman court: as the sultan in Istanbul exhibited his wealth before foreign ambassadors, so did the English king—especially because the decoration consisted of fine English cloth, one of the primary exports to the Ottoman Empire. The chiaus was accompanied by numerous merchants from the Levant Company, and was again seen by large crowds of Londoners, who by then must have become accustomed to exotic visitors.
The key episode that occurred during his visit was the exchange of foods: Finet sent him some sweetmeat and received in return various dishes of “meat dressed a la Turkeska.” Finet was aware of the tension that might ensue were he to send the chiaus some meat dishes: it was known to the chiaus that, either out of malice or ignorance, Christians sometimes presented to him religiously “unclean” meats. Evidently the ambassador was widely accessible to the community, and the community, insular in its Englishness, was not unwilling perhaps to try some pranks on the foreigner—especially a foreigner whose dietary codes clashed with their pork-eating delights. Food played a major part in bringing the Christians and the Muslims together, for, aside from pranks, the English were quite curious about Turkish cuisine. Shortly before the chiaus was to leave for home the Lord Marshall and the Lord Chamberlain asked Finet about Turkish food and secured an invitation from the chiaus to eat supper at his residence. Having paid the expenses themselves they had the chiaus’s servants prepare food “a la Turkeska,” and then the two lords, along with “other great lords,” had a wonderful meal with the messenger that was “so unusuall a mesure and manner.” English and Turk sat around the same table, with the highest seat reserved for the chiaus, “observing theyr content of appetite.” Turkish cuisine had arrived in England.
No visits of Muslim ambassadors are recorded during the civil wars and early Interregnum, but in May of 1657 an Algerian messenger arrived in London to “confirm,” in the words of the Venetian resident, “the good relations and trade between this country [England] and that mart [Algiers].”103 Three weeks after his arrival a “present of animals” that was to be presented to the Lord Protector was brought over by “another Turk of lower ranks, who is a renegade Greek.” In light of the good relations between the two countries the messenger was given, upon his departure a month later, “200 pieces of eight and a bolt of scarlet cloth.”104 It is possible that King Charles II entertained in 1667 an international fraud who may have been a Muslim in Christian disguise,105 but the most famous and publicized visitor of his reign was the Moroccan ambassador Mohammad bin Hadou, who arrived on 29 December 1681 and departed on 23 July 1682. 106 There were poems written about the occasion, descriptions in private correspondence and diaries, and most importantly, news reports about the ambassador in the London Gazette. Bin Hadou was entertained by royalty and seen by commoners; he wandered in the court and the city, and traveled to Oxford and Cambridge. He visited the Royal Society, met some of its members, and examined its research, attended banquets and concerts, and engaged in public activities. Along with his retinue he was widely observed and scrutinized; it was reported by John Evelyn that he did not drink wine, was courteous to women, was magnificent on horseback in Hyde Park, and was interested in Arabic manuscripts and scientific innovation. For the duration of their stay in England, the ambassador and the Moors became “the fashion of the season” generating so much excitement that Evelyn was embarrassed at the “concourse and tumult” of Londoners as they gathered to see the ambassadorial processions.
Clearly the Moors and Turks were “everywhere,”—not just in the literary imagination of English dramatists and poets, but in the streets, the sea towns, the royal residences, the courts, and the jails of Elizabethan, Jacobean and Caroline England and Wales.
The meeting with Muslims in the seventeenth century took place within the previously discussed categories of merchants/refugees, pirates, and ambassadors. What is significantly missing is the category of the Muslim traveler who would visit England on his own initiative. While numerous English and Scottish travelers wandered into the Muslim empire and described in detail the custom, history, and religion of Islam, no Muslims seem to have similarly ventured into the British Isles. This is perhaps because there was no holy site to attract Muslims as Christians were attracted to Palestine, and because Muslims may have feared their rulers, who might accuse them, upon their return, of being spies for Christian potentates—as indeed did happen to bin Hadou.
The Muslims who came to England and the British Isles were in the hundreds, and may have reached a few thousand, although during no period were there more than a few score together on British soil. All the meetings with Muslims took place among the inhabitants of the southern parts of England and Wales, extending from the coastal towns to London and some of its surrounding areas—areas in which the majority of immigrants from the continent (the Low Countries and France) settled.107 Although Turkish and North African naval activity did reach Scotland and Ireland, there are no records of Muslim refugees, merchants, or ambassadors in either of these two areas or in the northeast of England. There are accounts of Muslim pirates attacking (and sometimes being captured) in Ireland, but that does not change the fact that Muslims predominantly appeared in southern England and Wales. Finally, the Muslims who were seen in England were all men. In all the surviving records of captured Moors and Turks, there is not a single reference to a Muslim woman. While numerous British women were captured and sold in North Africa, no Muslim woman seems to have ever set foot on English soil, either as a refugee or a prisoner. There is no indication that any Muslim ambassador included women in his retinue.
In the actual interaction, therefore, between Muslims and Christians in seventeenth-century England, there was no transgressiveness that was seen to be inherent in the Muslim/Moor.108 There were social engagements marked by ambivalence and reciprocity, attraction and repulsion, but there was no violence. No Muslim ambassador was ever pelted with stones, as was the Spanish ambassador in the Jacobean period. Actually, and in terms of deep personal relations between Muslims and Britons, it is striking that the only marriages that occurred, or were about to occur, in all of English Renaissance history between English women and non-Christian men, took place with Turks and Moors. While there is no reference to an English woman ever marrying or thinking of marrying an unconverted or un-Christianized Jew or American Indian, there are numerous references to English-Muslim marriages and sexual liaisons. Muslims were clearly viewed as a different non-Christian group from the rest—and a group with whom miscegenation was passable if not desirable. In 1614, for instance, negotiations were conducted for the marriage of the sultan of Sumatra and the daughter of an English “gentleman of honorable parentage” because it was felt that such a marriage would be “beneficial to the [East India] Company.” Although some London clerics objected to the marriage on the grounds that the husband was a Muslim, the Company marshaled its own theologians to prove “the lawfulness of the enterprise . . . by scripture.” The marriage never took place, but it is important that the marriage of a Christian woman to a Muslim man was seen to be theologically (and not just practically) legitimate in some circles.109
A little over twenty years later, in 1636, as the number of British captives rose in Algiers and funds dried up to ransom them, an anonymous suggestion was made to King Charles I that he send English prostitutes to ransom the captured seamen—six prostitutes for every one seaman.110 Although the king did not act upon this advice, the idea that English (and other British) women would practice the oldest profession with “Turks” suggests an environment that did not view miscegenation as totally objectionable. In his memoir of captivity in Algiers between 1639 and 1644, T. S. described an amazing range of sexual affairs he had conducted with Muslim women—because he was handsome women, both married and widowed, were attracted to him. 111 One in particular was so courageous in pursuing him that he finally fell in love with her and offered to marry her if she would be willing to escape with him back to England. Unfortunately, “She had two Children, a Boy and a Girl, that kept her in that place otherwise I think I had then got my Freedom and carryed her away.” Later she gave birth to “a pretty little Girl, somewhat whiter than ordinary; the old Fool [her husband] thought himself to be the Father of it.”112 When other women made themselves available to T. S. he did not decline but told his Turkish master, who was happy to take his place in bed. Muslim master and Christian slave shared in the pleasures of illicit sex with Muslim women.
In the second half of the seventeenth century one of the wives of the dey of Algiers was English, and so too was one of the harem of Mulay Ismail, the powerful ruler of Morocco. She bore him two sons.113 In 1682 a Christian convert to Islam by the name of Hamed Lucas accompanied the Moroccan ambassador Mohammad bin Hadou to London, and during his stay married an English servant girl.114 The episode was recalled by Thomas Rymer a decade later: “With us [in England] a Moor might marry some little drab, or Small-coal Wench.” Rymer concluded from this match that the English people as a whole were unlike the Venetians in that they did not feel “hatred and aversion to the Moors,” and therefore were willing to marry them.115
Between Britons and Turks and Moors there was engagement and conflict, piracy and trade, sexual affairs and marriage—a whole scope of relationships and associations, some conducted within and some outside the law, some ambiguous and some unprecedented, some clandestine and some public. The shifts in the relations were chiefly governed by the diplomatic climate and were not dissimilar from shifts that occurred between Britons and Christian Europeans: when there was alliance or trade, relations were receptive and cooperative, and when there was rivalry and military confrontation, there was fear and anxiety. But among all the non-Christian peoples who came to England and interacted with Britons, whether in London or overseas, the Muslims entered into the most open and extensive relationships. They most widely permeated English literature, drama especially, in a manner different from any other non-Christian. In numerous plays there are references to Muslim-Christian and Muslim-English marriages—marriages that could not have taken place or even been dramatized between Britons/Christians and unconverted Jews or American Indians.116
Although Muslims were different from Britons in religion, culture, language, and sometimes skin color (especially in the case of the Moors), Britons treated them as they did other European aliens and pirates, merchants and ambassadors—what mattered was social and economic rank, profession, diplomatic role, and other marks of status. A Turkish pirate was not treated any worse than a captured Spanish pirate. Actually, he was often treated better; a Moorish ambassador raised as much suspicion and intrigue as other ambassadors. Significantly, there were never any anti-Muslim riots in London in the way that there were anti-alien riots.117 Muslims never roused English xenophobia perhaps because there were not as many Muslims as there were Dutch or Walloon families, and because no Muslim ruler ever threatened England in the manner of Philip II and his Armada.
The Turks and Moors belonged to the most powerful of all the non-Christian civilizations with which Britons were engaged. They also belonged to the international community of trade, diplomacy, and military rivalry that marked England’s foray into the age of Mediterranean and Atlantic discovery. Although from the Elizabethan period on the English were beginning to develop their anglocentric view of the world, they were deeply aware that they had to contend with a powerful and sometimes confrontational and aggressive islamocentrism—from Salee to London, from Tunis to Istanbul, and from Bristol to New England, Turks and Moors reminded them that the world did not revolve around Albion.118